


The Age of Elopement

by LLitchi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Love Letters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLitchi/pseuds/LLitchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>From Scott McCall to Allison Argent, Everyone in the castle says Lord Hale wouldn’t marry, he’s already got a special friend.</i>
</p>
<p>A series of letters. Two love stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Age of Elopement

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t mind the dates. I have no actual idea which time period this is supposed to be set in, (DID THEY EVEN USE A CALENDAR??? DID THEY ONLY HAVE KNIGHTS IN MEDIEVAL TIMES???) and just forget about old English or authenticity and what not. SORRY. I was like why don’t you write about something you are not completely ignorant about and then I realized the only thing I was remotely well-versed in was fanfiction WHAT’S THE ONE WITH JUVENILE OFFENDER!STILES IT’S CHERRYBOMB BY THE_DEEP_MAGIC A+
> 
> In other news: don’t fret, Derek/Stiles is definitely happening so stay with me. Also, tragically unbetaed. I’m still looking for a ~~research slave~~ beta.

Dear Allison,

By now mom’s let you know I had decided to come work in Hale castle. Please don’t be mad, and please don’t worry about me, I asked all around and they all say this is the only way I would ever stand half a chance in asking for your hand in marriage, so I had no choice, really. Or I don’t know, because Stiles told me I should have written that I wanted to do this, not because I had no other choice, but this is for me, and would my lady please be understanding of pointless machismo.

Oh Stiles! That’s right, that’s why you shouldn’t worry. He’s my new best friend here and he knows everyone and helped me settle in great. The other knights are nice but not nearly as much as, and Jackson should pretty much just go fall in a ditch as far as Stiles and I are concerned.

As for the Lord I don’t know what to make of him. He’s surly and snappish the first and only time I’ve a glimpse of him, and Stiles says that’s because his smile petrifies an entire ballroom. Ms Morrell agrees, and then tells me to stop being so gullible. Despite that Stiles’ still very nice, he got me an orange as an apology.

It’s been five days and I’m desperate for news from home already. Mom comes in to assist Deaton sometime and she’s okay and she tells me you’re okay, but please write back to me, too. How’s your training going, better than mine I bet? I’m not trusted with anything other than a wooden sword yet, and then when I tripped over a rocky patch of dirt they confiscated that too. I hope your mom stopped insisting on human target practice, don’t listen to Lydia, and be safe. I love you.

Yours,

Scott

***

Dear Allison,

I know you’re right to be mad but please, I need to hear from you or I’ll go out of my mind. Stiles has set a quota, you know, for the amount of time I get to spend talking about your hair, but there’s no word that could possibly encapsulate the chestnut color that’s tinged red in the light, is the thing.

Oh, and Stiles’ apparently not a knight. I thought he was, considering how much time he spends and how familiar he is with them, but he just wears really nice clothes and helps me and pesters Jackson until he disappears for the other half of the day. Jackson said he’s been around more since I came though, and I said of course he would, and Jackson told me I was in deep trouble with the Lord, was I blind or not. I thought he was bluffing, but then Lord Hale started attending more training sessions and glared at me the whole time. Nothing ever happened, and I asked Stiles if he knew why, and Stiles just called the Lord all manners of names.

We’re hosting a big feast next week, the kitchen’s been preparing since they got the news so the food’s been extraordinary. Erica, she’s from the higher staff, tells me that Peter Hale’s coming and conspiring to set Lord Hale up with a princess again, but it’s just a laughably transparent ploy to get to Stiles. And everyone in the castle says Lord Hale wouldn’t marry, he’s already got a special friend. I didn’t really understand so I just nodded along.

It’s all that happened since the last time. Please write to me, please? I love you.

Yours,

Scott

***

Dear Allison,

Stiles tells me to stop being emotionally manipulative by signing ‘I love you’ at the end. I do love you, I do, so much, but if it’s making you uncomfortable please tell me and I’ll stop, yes? Tell me, via letter. Stiles’ shaking his head watching me write so I’m banishing him from the room.

The Derek’s piss poor at me theory’s holding more than a couple gallons of water at this point. He’s so far graduated to cracking several of my ribs with a wooden sword in lieu of practice. Stiles sprinted out to the field and berated his dignity into submission though. That was satisfying to witness for all of us. Jackson even thanked me. And then he said I was as good as dead.

Oh right, turns out Stiles’ a friend of the Lord, that’s why he could go off like that and not get his head chopped off. And that he’s a sorcerer studying under Deaton, apparently.

You know, now that I’m looking for it I do see Derek and Stiles together around the castle. It’s also possibly because I’m relegated to cleaning staff while my ribs heal. They’re just bickering most of the time, once Derek snatched Stiles’ wrist and shoved him against the wall and I raced to help, but Stiles just blasted him away with his hand. The maids looked totally blasé, so I asked Stiles later if that happened every day. Stiles told me that if I had eyes I would have seen that he could take care of himself. I asked him if that made it acceptable, and he considered me and said no. I did tell you he’s a fantastic guy, as smart as Lydia, only he listens to me instead of patting me on the head telling me I was cute but not nearly good enough for you. You would like him.

Yesterday Peter Hale arrived. No one in the castle seems to like him. I felt sorry for him until I saw him corner Stiles and run his thumb across Stiles’ lip, a hand down his arm, and suddenly I understood why his compliments and general goodwill wishes to everybody made my skin crawl. Erica stared at me incredulously, which is unwarranted since I only heard Peter ask Stiles if he enjoyed swords.

Please write.

Yours,

Scott

***

Dear Allison,

You’re right. Everything you said is right and I’m not saying that just because you finally wrote back. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I never asked. I’m sorry I took the decision out of your hand. I’m sorry I implied you would react unreasonably hysterically. I’m sorry I tried to alienate your friend to you. Bother, this is why I need you. To tell me what to do. Stiles’ been handling it lately but he says he’s not nearly up to task. He’s looking impressed right now, please tell me it’s an indication of me doing something right.

The thing is I’d been thinking of asking you to maybe move to the country. In secret. I don’t even know, throughout the day I would just be thinking of ways to ask you to elope with me without sounding like I was asking you to spend the rest of your life with me and abandon everybody else to do it, all in one breath. And I thought of mom, how I couldn’t leave _her_ , how I would never ask you to leave yours, and Isaac—you know him, he’s with the knights too—made a very convincing case about knights’ keep and your dowry.

Oh god, Jackson doesn’t deserve Lydia, Allison. He doesn’t deserve to lick her shoe. Just last week I saw him with Elena, and considering that I’m voted daftest in the castle and that Lydia would have already been meeting with Jackson then, I think maybe you should warn her a little, or a lot, about him.

I’m sorry about that, if you don’t want to talk about your family I won’t mention them again. Just always here, if you do.

About Stiles, everyone’s been dropping increasingly baffling hints about Lord Hale and Stiles, and one day everything just clicked and I realized Stiles was Derek’s special friend who they were going on about at length, who they thought slept…who they thought was his lover, I suppose. It makes sense, now that I think about it, since Stiles deflected whenever conversation brought the Lord up and Stiles was tactile with everyone, but the Lord wasn’t, only with him, let only him touch and grab and prod, and the Lord’s vendetta against me was apparently a petty jealous fit backed by medieval patriarchy and a wooden sword. Too bad that emphatically did not impress Stiles.

Only they weren’t lovers, Stiles told me, and that makes less sense, somehow, even though I’d just worked out the other stuff. I confronted him, I thought he was my best friend and I could keep a secret or two, I could, especially one so important to him, but he didn’t have one, and they weren’t. Stiles saved the Lord’s life once upon a time, he said, from a hag named Kate, and he’d been welcome at court ever since. When his magic manifested it just seemed natural to prolong his visit, and suddenly it’d been years since he last saw his father even though they still regularly correspond, and now Stiles’d learned enough magic to make the process expedited, or something. I don’t know, he was talking so fast, mile-a-minute and there was stuff like “not that I wouldn’t have wanted to,” and “Derek would never, anyway, he’s not like that,” and “it’s been just easier to let everyone assume, since Peter, you know, wants Derek to get married and he’s still not ready, after Kate,” mixed in. Oh, Derek is the Lord’s first name, did I tell you?

Peter’s still here and still making us on pins and needles. Also he brought a lot of people, so I’m actually helping out in the stables.

I love you.

Yours,

Scott

***

Dear Allison,

Yes, a thousand times yes. And I know mom adores you, and I didn’t ask her yet, she’d be at the infirmary the next fortnight, but I’m sure she would go with us, she’d be thrilled that I had the guts and that she wouldn’t have to listen to me wax poetic about your eyes. It was a bit weird, she said. And I don’t hate your mom, not when she’s nice to you anyway, not when she makes you happy, but I have only ever seen her being ugly to you and forcing things you hate on you.

Only I have to see this through now. Stiles’ thing with the Hales, I mean, and it would take a few more months. Derek Hale’s taken to stalking us, and Stiles loudly made comparisons to the bulldog and that’s been fun for a while, but even I think that Derek Hale’s being so incredibly obvious and pitiful that it actually hurts to watch. Stiles insists that Derek’s more interested in a female beagle than in him, and I asked Stiles if he’d ever seen Derek so jealous of a male beagle than he is of Peter. We had a good laugh at the mental image of Peter, the beagle.

A few days later, you know, I was going to the stable, and I heard my name so I stopped, peered into a room, and Derek and Stiles were having a shouting match, a huge one, they’re both red in the face and in the eyes, and Derek was growling and Stiles was so angry the air around him zipped with live electricity. It’s the worst because they were arguing about me, and Derek barked something about Stiles and I being unseemly, and that he would rather not see that in his castle, and Stiles screeched that nothing was going on, you bird brain, and then he said it a little smaller, a little hurt, that if his sexuality offended Derek so much why didn’t he just hang him, banish him, instead of making him feel like this. I couldn’t stand it anymore, you know, so I barged in and gathered Stiles, tried to steer him away and back to his quarters, but that seemed to only have made the whole thing worse.

When I walked him back he muttered about actually leaving with Peter, this time, see how Derek would like that, and Derek would probably like that, fuck his life. But I didn’t take him seriously because anyone considering going anywhere with Peter was obviously out of his addled mind.

So. Help?

Allison, I asked, and Jackson’s seeing at least three other girls here. Lydia can catch him with one of them at one of the alcoves in the East-West hallway the day after the next, I think—you can never tell with Erica, but I did impress on her that this was serious, so. I don’t know if Lydia should see, though.

I’m enjoying work in the stables. The horses are so much more agreeable than knights with a sword in their hand and a stick up their ass.

I love you.

Yours,

Scott

***

Dear Allison,

Oh god I don’t mind, I totally get it. I wouldn’t want your parents to catch us with the letters either, and I still have all the drafts anyway.

And ugh! Peter came up to me fishing for information about Derek, how Derek and Stiles were doing, and so on. I couldn’t tell him, I said, because there _wasn’t_ anything going on between them.

So last week they called on me to serve during dinner because no one could stand Peter. _Interesting_. Oh god Stiles is making fun of me again. Tell him that ‘sly’ so does fit on my face too, Allison!

The matter is I listened to Derek and Peter’s backward family politics for a whole hour, and now that I know Peter’s referring to Stiles by ‘Derek’s friend’ it’s way beyond creepy. He means to marry off Derek so he could get Stiles, I think, but then Stiles was snacking on the fruits in the kitchen and told me that that’s all a front, really, he only wanted to weaken Derek’s power and expand his own by facilitating the marriage. Then I came back to refill the wine and Peter made a snide about Stiles’ pitying Derek but never going to pity him so much to give him the time of day, because apparently that Derek and Stiles not actually sleeping together was a secret, and I feel so guilty Allison!

I sprinted back to the kitchen to apologize to Stiles but I think he didn’t understand me, and after that I had to run away. I haven’t got the nerve to speak to him since, and I didn’t see him around much for the last couple of days anyway.

Tell me what to do, I love you.

Yours,

Scott

P.S. glad she dumped the asshole.

***

Dear Allison,

Of _course_ I keep your letters under my pillows. I was afraid they’d get wrinkly so I check them every morning but the pillow’s so hard anyway so they’ve been fine. They make me sleep better, they do.

Oh, I am so, so sorry this one took so long, but it’s because after the thing I’d been trying to arrange our _rendezvous_ , stop snickering, Stiles! People do _so_ use that in casual conversation. The other thing with Stiles and Peter, it’s all sorted now, and hah!, Stiles is busy blushing now so that’s all the input from him today.

He says he would have liked you.

I suppose I should tell you about the Derek and Stiles thing first, it’s just good form to be chronological, you know. Anyway I think you enjoyed hearing about me utterly accidentally saving the day?

So because I saw Stiles before I got your letter, I didn’t have a chance to properly word my apology and salvage our friendship, only Peter had left some days ago _and_ we weren’t greeting a new mistress yet, so I figured I must not have botched everything too badly.

Anyway, then he told me what happened after I put my tails fast behind my legs. Apparently Stiles stormed in and explained that I knew jack shit about he and Derek, and a handful of complicated hand motions later Peter was suddenly interrogating them about their relationship and that was the catalyst for all sorts of revelations, including the one that they basically knew every horrible thing about each other and tolerated each other, still, and the fact that they were practically married, minus the ceremony, the actual titles, and the sex. Except that they told Peter that there was the sex, of course.

After that Stiles went on great detail about the sex he and Derek had had to make up for lost time and my brains couldn’t shut down fast enough, and nothing did compensate for the parts I’d broken listening about what horrible crimes they committed against half the casket of honey ale, newly shipped from…wherever, I forget, too.

So when he was finished with the making up for lost time and the traumatizing me, he helped put in a word for me with his relations in Ealdor, a guy named Boyd, and helped with the transportation and travel clothes and sending letters back without alerting anyone and stuff, which I didn’t even think of! I was just worried about shaking your family off our trail. Stiles’ fussing over this also amuses us a terrible lot because Derek’s glaring mutely at me, but it’s from his vantage point at the edge of the bed with Stiles _on his lap and they’re **necking**_ so it’s a bit traumatizing, as well. If nothing changes we’ll meet at my house three weeks from today, the twenty-fifth, what do you think? Please get back to me before then.

I love you.

Yours,

Scott

P.S. It’s the strangest thing. I don’t know if I should say goodbye to the people here or not, just, it’s not safe, I know, it’s just so hard and I’m not even leaving my parents. I can’t imagine what you must be going through, and I can’t replace them, can’t be what they mean to you, but I’ll try.

***

_Found in Allison McCall’s personal effects._

_(She didn’t have the heart to burn them, after all.)_

***

Dear Scott,

Old buddy old pal how _have_ you been? I know I promised to wait for your letter first, well I lied! What took you so long you prat? Did you realize how I have waited, perched upon the hilltop, enduring mocking ridicule along the vein of ‘scorned lover’? Derek had been Most Unpleased about that, by the way.

In other news Peter’s been by for a few days, as creepy as always but perhaps more resigned about my not touching his junk ever, even if he was the last person on earth, sorry. Weeeeell he does look dashing in that older gentleman way, you must admit. Creepy, but dashing.

Don’t look so scandalized your face’s getting stuck that way. Put the eyeballs back in their sockets, I mean it.

Okay I take it back Derek’s not too happy with it from over here, either. Did I tell you he’s breathing on my neck and insisting he supervises the letter like a jealous twat? Go away, shoo.

And another thing about Peter, who I have apparently given too little credit to. He told me in no uncertain terms—I was not no such assortment of ‘blind’ and/or ‘dense,’ okay, only a bit more oblivious than the average sorcerer about that kind of stuff, maybe—that his main objective for a long while had been to get me to his bed or a nearby flat surface, either would do, and preferably stay with him indefinitely. Who knew? (Not a word.)

Fine, the real reason I’m writing now is that Derek and I will go on a hunting trip for a couple of months and I don’t know if we’ll get the chance to get out the parchment and the ink or just spend all of the trip sweaty and naked inside the tent. That’s you, right there, making your horrified face. But seriously I may not be able to move let alone write so consider the skinned rabbits you will inevitably get in the post an apology of some sort.

How are you and Allison, by the way? Have you attempted the scallion recipe I gave you? If yes, have your eyebrows grown back yet? Have you gotten started at all in the baby making business? How’s Boyd, because I am secretly uncertain if he was a human or a machine.

Get Allison to proofread the letter first because I’m not there to do it for you and I’d rather laugh at you in person and not behind your back. I’m a good friend like that.

~~Love,~~ (Goddamn it Derek it’s just how you sign a letter)

Stiles

P.S. I wish you made it as a knight rather than as a stable boy—people are much less likely to make fun of you if you did. But then, I suppose, you have already managed to impress the one person who matters.

***

_Also found in Allison McCall’s personal effects._

_(Scott died first, when he was 58, and he left everything he loved in the world to his wife who treasured them until she followed her husband to the next world.)_


End file.
